A jib door is a door that is not meant to read as one. Flush with the wall, no architrave, no visible frame, and a paint line or shadowline that runs straight past it. Done well, nobody notices it. Done badly, it is the first thing everybody notices.

Tolerance is what makes it hard. An ordinary door hides a great deal behind its architrave. A jib door has nothing to hide behind, so the frame has to be dead plumb, the leaf has to be flat, and the gap has to be identical top to bottom and side to side.

Which means the frame goes in before the plasterer, not after. Concealed frames are set and packed to the finished wall line, the sheeting is run to the frame, and the setout is agreed with the plasterer and the painter in one conversation rather than three.

Concealed hinges and magnetic or push latch hardware keep the face unbroken. Where a client wants something to pull on, it is usually a flush pull let into the leaf and finished in the same coating as the wall around it.

Wall panelling is the same discipline over a larger area. Panel widths, vertical joints and shadowlines are set out so a door lands on a panel line instead of cutting across one, which is the difference between a designed wall and a wall with a door hidden in it.

In apartments and hotels the same detail absorbs service cupboards, risers and laundry doors. It is worth doing wherever a room has more doors than it wants: taking three architraves out of a small space changes how large the room feels.

Painted finishes are the most common and the most demanding. Door and wall have to match in sheen as well as colour, which means agreeing the product with the painter rather than assuming it.

Send through a plan or a photo of the wall and tell us what sits behind it. We will come back with a detail, a hardware option and a price.